Patent Application
20120259472
The present invention relates to a material application to plants, and, more particularly, to a method and system of controlling material applications to plants in a closed loop manner.
The application of different materials to plants is well known and includes the delivery of pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, as well as various nutrients including fertilizers and organic preparations. There is a high level of sensitivity relative to the overuse of agents in material on plants, and the cost of such applications are significant inputs into the operation of an agricultural operation, particularly the application of a perennial plant operation such as an orchard. The efficient use of nutrients and chemical applications to the trees in an orchard take into account several things, including the effects on the biology and chemistry of soil as well as the influence of weather upon the material applications.
One of the more common forms of material application, especially in conventional agriculture, is the use of mechanical sprayers. Sprayers typically include a tank, a pump, a boom, and a nozzle, which may be directionally controlled. Sprayers convert a material application, often containing a mixture of water or other liquid chemical carriers such as fertilizer and any other chemicals, into droplets, which can be rain-type drops or tiny, almost invisible mist-like particles. This conversion is accomplished by forcing the spray mixture through a spray nozzle under pressure. The size of the droplets can be altered through the use of different nozzle sizes, or by altering the pressure under which the material application is forced through the nozzle, or by a combination of both.
There are some technologies available that are utilized for better control of the material being sprayed through a sprayer. In some instances, controlling droplet size using ultralow volume or very low volume application rates of mixtures can be utilized to achieve adequate results by improved timing and dose transfer to the biological target. An understanding of the biology and the life cycle of the plant as well as any pests is an important factor in determining the type of application in the agricultural system.
Specialty crop producers utilize geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) for grove planting and pest tracking. Variable rate technology of material is being adopted but it has been limited to controlled spraying when a tree or plant is detected. U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,184,859 and 7,103,451 discuss methods and systems for spatially variable rate application of agricultural chemicals based on remotely sensed vegetation data. Aerial imagery is used to measure the tree health and the data is processed and a prescription is generated. Undisclosed techniques are utilized to generate the prescription and there is no algorithm disclosed nor is there an input of yield data. While GPS is used to record the application of chemicals, there is no use of GPS data to tag the tree yield data. There is no connection between the yield and delivery chemical inputs by way of GPS location tracking.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,862,083 disclose a system and method for characterizing and mapping agricultural plants and foliage. This system uses a laser range finding system to identify trees and then activates a sprayer accordingly, taking into account the tree condition. The disclosed tree conditions are dead, fully grown, or juvenile. This disclosure does not record the location of the tree using GPS system, nor does it tie the tree yield to an amount of spray or chemical treatment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,926,211 disclose a closed loop mosquito insecticide delivery system. This system uses GPS maps of known mosquito infested areas, such as stagnant ponds, to actuate the sprayer at the appropriate location. There is no measure of the efficacy of the spray treatment or any adjustment of the insecticide spray accordingly.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,851 disclose a real time plant nutrition prescription including the measure of plant tissue analysis to determine the prescription through a rule base. There is no use of yield, or GPS, to determine the amount of chemical treatment delivered to an individual tree.
What is needed in the art is a system and method to close the loop between yield and material applications delivered to individual plants.
The present invention provides a closed loop method in the control of a material application to a plant, particularly a tree in an orchard, using yield data of the plant.
The invention in one form thereof is directed to a method of controlling material applications to plants. The method includes the steps of tracking and modifying. The tracking steps include tracking at least one of a location, a type, an age, and a yield of at least some of the plants including a first plant. The modifying step includes modifying a material application device. The material being directed to the first plant by the material application device is dependent upon at least the location, the type, the age, and/or the yield of the first plant.
The above-mentioned and other features and advantages of this invention, and the manner of attaining them, will become more apparent and the invention will be better understood by reference to the following description of an embodiment of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views. The exemplification set out herein illustrates one embodiment of the invention and such exemplifications are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the invention in any manner.
Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to
As tractor 24 pulls material application device 22, GPS/data system 26 is either in communication with analyzer 30 or has a stored memory program that is transferred either by wireless communication or memory transfer or some other data transfer method having a prescribed material application for each tree. As tractor 26 pulls material application device 22, the offset between GPS/data system 26 and material application device 22, and particularly the nozzles and/or delivery mechanisms, is positioned to spray a particular prescription 32 or 34 in the form of a material application to individual trees. The offset between tractor 24 and, more particularly, GPS/data system 26 and applicator 22 is a known distance and is compensated for by GPS/data system 26. The path of tractor 24 may correspond to the path shown, in which case, the material application device 22 may pass both sides of the trees, and, in this case, a portion of a prescription may be provided to tree 16 in the form of material application 34 and then the rest of the prescription may be provided as tree 16 is approached from the opposite side.
Material application 32 and material application 34 is selected to be appropriate to each particular tree and may include an amount of a delivery of a solution and/or different solutions depending upon the tree age, location, type, and yield data.
Base station 28 is part of a real time kinematic system that interfaces with GPS/data system 26 to significantly improve the accurately of GPS/data system 26 to determine the positioning of tractor 24 and, hence, material application device 22. The RTK system is positioned at a known position in orchard 10 and provides an error correction signal, which is received by GPS/data system 26 to more accurately determine the position of material application device 22.
Selected trees within orchard 10 are the subject of a design of experiments technique in which nutrient and application of chemicals are applied to better test and understand the responsiveness of trees of different types and ages to material applications of these nutrients, biological and/or chemical applications. As a result, if trees 12 and 18 are part of the design of experiment trees then the various applications to trees 12 and 18 provide data that are correlated to yield that is then utilized to determine a material application 32 and 34 respectively to trees 14 and 16. Analyzer 30 utilizes the information from the design of experiments process to determine a correlation between the yield of tree 12 to develop the material application 32 applied to tree 14. The material application regime applied to trees 12 and 18, and other trees of the design of experiment process, takes into account many aspects including nutrient levels, chemical application amounts and timing, as well as correlating weather and soil types to provide an optimized material application 32 and 34 for trees 14 and 16. Trees 14 and 16, for the sake of clarity, are considered to not be a part of the design of experiment and are recipients of material applications correlated on trees in orchard 10 under the analysis of analyzer 30. The yield of each tree is logged relative to tagged bins or other methods to gather information relative to trees when the crops are harvested therefrom.
Now, additionally referring to
Specialty crops, such as trees grown in orchard 10, are very dependent upon fungicide, pesticide, and herbicide spraying as well as the delivery of nutrients, for example in the form of fertilizer for the productive yield of trees in orchard 10. General chemical inputs are very expensive, as shown by a University of Florida citrus production cost summary (EDIS FE629), these costs per acre per application can cost in the neighborhood of $65-$100 per spray and $55 for nitrogen. The prior art practice is to apply the same amount of nutrients and chemicals to all acres and, therefore, all trees. However, all trees are not the same, oftentimes some are smaller since they are replants and others are older and more mature trees. Specialty crops, such as trees in a grove, may have had a record of their yield by pump blocks. However, a problem in the prior art is that there is no way to measure an individual tree's yield in response to nutrients and chemical treatments. The present invention allows a measurement system that provides a way to control input costs by applying less to less productive trees and more to more highly productive trees. Even a small savings in input cost can provide large savings per acre, particularly for an entire orchard. The present invention provides the grove/orchard/vineyard manager a way to monitor a plant's yield in response to nutrient and chemical inputs.
Method 100 as it is utilized with material application system 20 provides for a sensing of the applications of material and correlates it to a yield produced per plant in orchard 10 so the information flowing to analyzer 30 includes the GPS location, the amount of chemical and nutrients applied to each tree by location, and a GPS location tagged to the yield of each tree. When the crop is collected at harvest time, each gathered amount is tagged by GPS location when it is picked up to thereby tie the producing tree to a particular bucket or series of buckets to calculate the production of each tree. The transfer of data between analyzer 30 and GPS/data system 26 can be transferred prior to entering orchard 10 and GPS/data system 26 may even be under real time control. On board memory of GPS/data system 26 allows for information to be passed to material application device 22 to thereby control material applications 32 and 34.
Method 100 is utilized by material application system 20 to track the material application by using the GPS/data system 26 associated with tractor 24 to record the location and the instrumented sprayer/applicator, described herein as a material application device 22, to record the amount of chemical applied. The recorded location and amount of chemical applied is stored in a memory, perhaps as a flash type memory or wireless transmissions are undertaken to the database contained in analyzer 30. During harvest, the GPS location of each tree is recorded, along with the yield from that tree. Additionally, as discussed above, if broader areas are of interest, the locale of a particular area may suffice, along with a yield for that locale. This data may be sent to the database by a wireless communication system or by a transfer of data in some other known manner.
Analyzer 30 may include an analysis engine that process the data through either a simple ratio of yield per input amount and cost or through a more sophisticated algorithm showing the yield response to specific chemicals and timing of those applications. In the preceding discussion, trees 12 and 18 were designated as being part of a design of experiments process; however, a control section of the grove can be set up separately in orchard 10 to conduct a design of experiments relative to various applications to the trees in that particular control group, thereby providing correlations that are utilized to determine the material applications applied to other trees in the grove.
While this invention has been described with respect to at least one embodiment, the present invention can be further modified within the spirit and scope of this disclosure. This application is therefore intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptations of the invention using its general principles. Further, this application is intended to cover such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice in the art to which this invention pertains and which fall within the limits of the appended claims.
